She was very cautious, usually only leaving her home at noon or 1 p.m. to go shopping.

The woman had been living alone for 25 years, ever since her second husband died. She often told her son, Crawford Taylor, who lived in Texas, that she was worried someone would break into her home.

A few times a week she would walk three blocks to a supermarket to shop for herself and an 86-year-old invalid neighbor.

But on Aug. 22, 1980, she broke her rule because she was feeling ill and wanted to go shopping early in the morning so she could return home and go to bed.

Near the corner of East 14th Avenue and Pearl Street, two young men in their early 20s attacked her, beating her unmercifully and stealing her money and rings.

She was taken unconscious and in a coma with massive head injuries to Denver General Hospital, which is now Denver Health Medical Center.

Two days later at about 8:30 a.m. on Aug. 24, 1980, within a few yards of where Bryden was attacked, someone knocked on the front door of the home of Florence Wilson, 87, at 521 E. 14th Ave.

But when Wilson made it to the front door, nobody was on her front porch. Then she heard a knock at her back door.

When she undid the security chain and opened the back door a young man pushed his way into the home and grabbed her by the corset. When she began to scream he shoved her to the floor.

The suspect, described as being black, about 6-feet tall with an Afro hair cut and wearing a long-white sleeved shirt with a black tie, matched the description of one of the two men who had attacked Bryden.

Wilson’s hip was broken.

On Sept. 17, Bryden died.

Eleven days later, on Sept. 28, Wilson died.

Former Denver police Capt. Don Mulnix, who has since died, said at the time that the suspects hung out at banks and grocery stores waiting for elderly women to cash their pension checks, then followed them home.

It was tough to catch them because they were on foot and witnesses didn’t have car license plates to report to police.
Denver police spokeswoman Sharon Avendaño said cold case investigators believe each of the five murders were committed by different suspects.

She said police would welcome any leads that might help solve the cases.

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.